


mari's first day of high school

by Eldestmiddle



Series: katsuki family values [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Beating, Being a teenager is hard, Gen, i was sober when i wrote this, katsuki fam, mari-centric, reference to girl gangs, school life?, winners get katsudon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 12:24:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10386603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldestmiddle/pseuds/Eldestmiddle
Summary: winners get katsudon.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bonehandledknife (ladywinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/gifts).



> i do not condone the use of violence to solve problems and express yourself. that being said, i haven't always been like this.
> 
> This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
> 
> thank you

Mari is fifteen when she finally really looks at her baby brother.

She’s just come back from her first day of high school half-blind because she mouthed off the wrong senior and got beat up by her gang. There are at least two loose teeth rattling around in her mouth and her father bursts into tears upon seeing her bedraggled form limp its way in through the inn’s front doors. The looks on the regulars’ faces make her think, ah, I should’ve jumped the fence to come in the back door, except, no, no, she couldn’t because she’s hurt and she’s hurting too much to jump the back fence right now.

Hiroko is a lot more sanguine about her daughter’s disastrous freshman debut.

“Go on to your room, I’ll bring some rice porridge for you and a compress. And stop wiggling your teeth.”

Mari gratefully ducks past her frantic father to sidle down the hall. The quiet of the hallway is soothing to her pounding head. She stumbles into her room and falls in a somewhat controlled manner on the bed. Her chest is numb though that might be just the bruising.

Her mother quietly opens the door and sets a tray down on her dresser.

“I’ve left a cold compress and a wet towel. Get changed. You’ll feel better.”

Mari mumbles something that could be a yes and Hiroko leaves her be.

She doesn’t move until the porridge cools and the shadows have lengthened into twilight. And only then because she can feel herself beginning to stiffen up and knows that staying still will make things worse. Getting out of the uniform makes her groan and curse as she stretches tense and bruised muscles. It’s ruined and they’ll have to buy a new one. Another drain on the draining family budget. She wipes her face with the lukewarm towel and uses the melted ice in the compress to rewet the towel and give herself a sponge bath. There is a soft oversize tshirt of her father’s and her oldest sweatpants laid out. She crawls into them and, true to her mother’s word, she feels a bit better. Then she takes a deep breath and looks herself in the mirror.

The verdict is terrible.

The right side of her face is swollen and scraped from being smashed into the pavement. Her left side looks better though it doesn’t feel it, having been slapped and spit on. Her lips have split in multiple places and her hair is a mess, the braids long gone. Her clothes cover most of what was done to her body but Mari looks at her scabby hands and remembers her clenched fists getting stepped on and ground into the cement. Suddenly, she feels as though she is about to cry and she is _horrified_.

“Nee-chyan?”

Mari hurriedly wipes her eyes on the hem of her shirt. “What?” she snaps in a wavering tone and then immediately tries to soften her voice. “Does mom need something?”

Yuuri is the undisputed prince of the onsen. Mari had been conceived late in her mother’s teenage years and there had been complications at birth which put Hiroko on medication with warnings to not conceive for a couple years. After Hiroko had gotten the green light from the doctor, the Katsuki couple had tried for another child, only to find that the complications had made a second pregnancy unlikely without expensive fertility treatments that would have to take place in another town. Toshiya had been willing to go the distance and expense but Hiroko had put her foot down. She had declared that if she had another child, it would be a blessing but she wouldn’t bargain her family’s stability on stacking the odds in her favor especially since it wasn’t guaranteed in the first place.

Mari had been two or three at the time but she remembers hearing her mother cry with Minako-san in in the dining room after hours. Minako-san had offered a loan but Hiroko had staunchly refused even as she wiped away her tears. Toshiya had been the one to explain to Mari in halting words why her mother was so sad. She only found out about her own birth playing a role in this much later after Yuuri had already long arrived.

Yuuri’s conception might as well been a miracle. Six years after Mari’s birth, her mother had been sick but assumed that one of the customers had passed along a virus. After the vomiting persisted with a hard bloating around the abdomen, Hiroko had feared the worst and quietly made a doctor’s appointment and had Minako-san take her in her car. She broke down in the doctor’s office after being told it was a pregnancy. Minako and she had clung to each other, sobbing and had to call a taxi to take them back to the onsen. Toshiya had been overjoyed and in tears himself after hearing why his wife had returned from a “day out with Minako” in such a condition.

Mari had been mostly indifferent. She didn’t have much of a nurturing side and the thought of a sibling had been such an unbelievable abstract for so long that it didn’t seem quite real. She helped out more with folding towels and wiping dishes as her father had quietly told her to make sure her mother didn’t overwork herself, but she wasn’t particularly excited or angry about the coming baby.

After Yuuri was born in a relatively easy birth, Mari lost any incipient interest in her brother upon being told that he was too small to play, talk, or understand her. That wasn’t to say that she didn’t understand how precious he was to the family and her mother especially but Mari found that having Yuuri didn’t lessen her parents’ regard for her or really impact her life inordinately. The one time she had thrown a tantrum about her mother bringing Yuuri along to her elementary graduation, her father had quietly pulled her aside to explain in very gentle terms the true miracle of Yuuri’s birth. Mari had treated Yuuri more tenderly after that but really had been much more busy with her own life and the problems of awkwardly starting to grow into an identity.

Yuuri steps into her room, light feet and chubby cheeks. Pampered and indulged by family and regulars alike, her brother is a sweet kid, no trouble at all. He takes dance lessons with Minako-san, now that she’s retired from professionally dancing and is the apple of her eye. Mari looks away, a little ashamed that her baby brother saw her beaten up and about to cry. He folds himself down next to her with a grace that belies his round limbs and hugs her, looking up at his sister, solemn and patient. Despite herself, Mari finds that she’s smiling a little at him even with her cracked and bleeding lips.

Yuuri is a good kid.

Yuuri’s stomach growls into the silence, making her laugh in surprise.

“Hungry, already? Didn’t mom give you enough at dinner?”

Mari ducks her head to better hear Yuuri.

“What?”

Picking at the scabs on his knees, Yuuri mumbles, “Aki-kyun called me fat.”

Mari stares at him, uncomprehending, before grabbing at her brother’s hands.

There are little nicks and cuts on the heels of his palms that look like the scrapes on his knees. They look like he might’ve fallen down. On hard pavement.

Her little dancer brother.

Just falling.

It is as though a supernova has gone off behind her eyes.

Mari is abruptly furious, breathless and blind.

Her soft, fat brother who learns ballet from his godmother is getting pushed around at school.

It probably wasn’t the first time.

Somehow, that makes everything about this day all the worse.

She picks him up and sits him on her hip, wobbling slightly as she gets up. He’s probably too big to be picked up but he’s also probably too big for that lisp of his. The regulars didn’t help by baby talking him all the time, even though he was almost eight already.

“C’mon. We’re both going to go eat.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, we’re going to eat katsudon.”

Yuuri brightens up and cuddles his face against her bruised shoulder as she walks down the hall to the kitchen. She doesn’t even wince.

“Katsudon? We’re eating katsudon?”

“That’s right.” Mari yanks open the fridge. “Because we’re Katsukis, which means we’re winners. And winners get katsudon.”

So Mari makes katsudon from scratch just the way her mother does with her baby brother balanced on her hip, which is no joke. She sits down and chews hot rice, egg, and breaded pork cutlet carefully with her wiggly teeth, cut up mouth, and split lips, and it’s worth it for the smile on her brother’s face as he devours his favorite meal as he assures her it’s just like mama’s.

Mari tucks him back into bed, sleepy and full, after brushing his teeth for him as he nods off against her chest. Back in her room, the ruined uniform, the towel and compress, and the tray of cold porridge have already been taken away.

Mari sits herself down in front of the mirror again and studies herself. She touches her hair, remembering how proud she had been of her two French braids that Minako had taught her to do. How fierce she thought they had made her look. Like the sport and music models in the magazines Minako had brought her from overseas. She digs through a drawer for a pair of scissors.

Later, she knocks on her parent’s bedroom with an absolute mess on her head which makes her father nearly take fright again. Luckily, Mari hadn’t cut everything off so Hiroko nips down to the 24 hour conbini for some supplies. She mostly evens out Mari’s hair to a shaggy boycut and then sets a perm to soak in while she applies ointment to her daughter’s wounds. Hiroko’s almost nonchalant manner in which she handles everything goes a long way towards calming Toshiya who sits by his daughter with her hand in his but he knows better than to ask how he can make things better because the answer is he can’t.

After the perm is rinsed out, Mari’s hair dries wavy and as fluffy as a lion’s mane, haloing her head. It flops over her forehead as well until her mother hands her a plain red headband. She pulls it over her head and back over her hair so that everything is pushed away from her face and admires herself in the mirror. Mari looks at her dad who smiles encouragingly and says, “You look beautiful, Mari-chan.”

The next day, Mari jumps that same senior who sicced the gang on her.

She skips morning classes to wrap her hands the way an older ex who boxed in his school’s club taught her and slips onto school grounds during the lunch break. When the girl steps away from her friends to go to the vending machine, Mari follows her to edge of the sports grounds. She yanks a drawstring bag over the second-year’s head from behind and pulls it tight. Taking advantage of the older girl’s surprise, Mari drags her behind the sports shed to throw her to the ground and starts whaling on her. The girl shrieks and tries to blindly claw at Mari’s face but Mari keeps one hand on the strings, half-strangling the girl as she punches and kicks her. Finally, the girl just curls up in a dirty, sobbing mess and Mari takes the bag off to spit in her senior’s face. She waits patiently as the second-year blearily reorients herself.

“ _You!_ ”

“Me.”

**Author's Note:**

> after school, mari goes to pick up her brother from his school for the first time like a conquering hero and scares the bejeezus out of everybody. they have katsudon for dinner again. hiroko smilingly deflects anyone who tries to make issue with mari's lifestyle choices. toshiya takes mari to get every one of her piercings and takes all the care pamphlets to help her with the healing. yuuri grows up completely trusting his sister and laughs everytime she squats down in front of him and starts spitting cliche slang. mari joins the girl gang and gets into more fights and becomes boss by the end of her second year of high school. she goes to every one of her brother's dance recitals and brings flowers because he's a winner.
> 
> the senior who started it all transfers.
> 
> i don't know why i wrote this but i wrote this. i'm kinda nervous. the end note is because i need to redeem myself with a little katsuki fam fluff.


End file.
